#handling house

[selbyuk]

Being loyal

Whether we admit it or not, we’re all brand loyalists!

Let’s face it, how often do people recommend the product they use?  Whether it’s feedback of love or hate for a product, the chances are there will always be somebody buying what they perceive as being the best, in fact you could say they are your sales people.  To lose loyal customers, brands usually have to do something bad (and really bad at that!).  With platforms such as Facebook and Twitter being used to voice opinions, before you know it, the world knows when something is wrong!  

Loyalty Schemes (predominantly collectables) are still hot in the marketing industry, with many premiums making their appearance on eBay for unbelievably high prices! The planning of a Loyalty Scheme is detrimental to the smooth execution of the promotion and a handling house is a huge part of that – especially when you look at aspects of the scheme such as stock, database and reporting, all of which play a significant part.

So, what hasn’t been thought about?  Stock?  Watch out for this one!  If you’re sourcing your merchandise overseas, be aware of national holidays and factory shutdowns, which can go on for weeks.  Ensure you’ve ordered sufficient quantities too, to meet forecasted demands – especially if the scheme is easy to collect for.  And Database?  Decide from the offset what information you or your client would like to see on the final report and ensure this is catered for on the website and any printed materials – how can you report on something that isn’t in the data to start with?! And finally, decide what’s helpful to you when requesting reports and convey this information to your handling house – they can also help to identify other areas for reporting too.

In other words, never think you’re completely alone on your promotional journey as your loyal Handling House can always be there at your side!  Contact us on 0161 339 5132 to pick our brains on Loyalty Schemes or anything else you need help with under the promotional umbrella.

Speaking of brand protection which can come in various forms, a really heart-warming article appeared in the news this week which shows just that.  Reading this article about a rather special lady who works for one of the big supermarkets is recommended to not only put a smile on your face, but restore faith in human nature!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/36245901

[selbyuk]

Keep it clean!

Ever since the introduction of PIP (Pricing in Proportion) some 10 years ago (can you believe that?), the importance of getting it right in the first place is crucial as mistakes can prove costly!  Guaranteed price increases each year also add weight to the case for clean data.

So what is “clean” data, especially the data you wish to mail to?  Being a handling house who gets to see the good, the bad and the plain ugly, this is an easy question to answer!  Not everybody knows (forgive the pedant for those of you who do), but there is a central PAF (Postal Address File) used by Royal Mail and others from which address quality if measured against.  To put this in a nutshell, the further your data detracts from this, the least likely it is to reach its destination AND achieve discounts on Mailsorts, Barcoded mail, etc. and who wants that?

All is not lost!

If your data is a long-term investment, it’s always good practice to start off on the right footing with it BEFORE you start the job – certainly NOT DURING!  Why?  The “I’ll do it as I go along approach” will certainly buy you some time - after all, time is usually of the essence and the projects need to get off the ground quickly. Have you thought about this, though? Whilst valuable time is saved initially, money is lost.  How bad is it when you find a huge chunk of your mailing drops back on your doorstep undelivered, proving to be a complete waste of money and of course, your time.

There are several ways you can go about prepping your data, depending on time and budget.  If it’s a loyal, regular customer base, contact centre can be used via traditional telephone and email if there are several aspects of the data you need to check (of course, addresses would be PAF verified too.  This method would also be particularly helpful where customers have changed address, etc.  

On the other hand (and often used in the case of “new business”), running your data against the central PAF file to correct address anomalies works a treat saves both time and money. Having 25 years of experience in this field, we can help with any of these options – all you need to do is decide which one works best for you!

Of course, there’s no point in having all this clean data without a designated storage and maintenance facility!  No need to look any further!  However you need to use your data, whether it be for an order system, to produce statements or even for a direct mail campaign, we can help with it all.

Do you require help in getting your data squeaky clean?  Give us a call on 0161 339 5132 to discuss the many options available.  Always helpful if you know why you need a database!

[selbyuk]

2015 was one hell of a year…

The New Year has well and truly started – it’d unbelievable that we’re into the second week already. Sometimes it seems like Christmas has gone by in a blur. We had a great year here in 2015 and (forgive the cliché) we really couldn’t have done it without you!

Without sounding too philosophical, it’s always good to reflect.  Looking back can work in different ways, you can either improve on what you’ve done by looking at things in a different way or grow stronger at it, by expanding ideas – here at Selby’s we like to do both.  On the flip side of the coin, forward thinking has proved to be beneficial for a recent On-Pack Offer for a new client, leading to further opportunities in 2016.

It’s hard to pigeon-hole 2015 and say we were busy doing just one job in particular because this was the year when many of our services were used to their full potential.  It’s certainly been a fun year working with lots of major Blue Chip brands who brought out the child in us with their online competitions and offers, which saw us working with Dinosaurs and Robots, no less!  This proved one thing - the demand for premiums certainly hasn’t diminished which is great news for handling houses like us.

2016 doesn’t look like things will slow down (but we like to keep busy), with an expansion on a huge project we’re handling and the potential for another mammoth POS handling job (fingers-crossed!)

Despite being busy, there’s always room for more – whether your activity is on the large or small side, it will still be treated with the same care and attention as any other.  Please don’t hesitate to give us a shout on the usual number, 0161 339 5132 with any fulfilment requirements you require an extra set of hands with.

In the meantime, everything has a flip side, with the year starting off not so great with the devastating blow that was the loss of one of music’s most influential geniuses, the incomparable David Bowie.  Not only a talented performer and producer, his presence lives on in the music of many of the greats including The Artic Monkeys, The Smiths and The Killers (and this really is to name just a few).

Mr Bowie, we salute you.

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House Removals 101: Pack Properly and Carefully

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Packing and Labelling Tips <\p>

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[selbyuk]

Do too many cooks spoil the broth...?

… Or add a little more variety to the mix?  Plans have been announced by the BBC and ITV for staging political debates between the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems, Green Party, UKIP, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.   Sky and Channel 4 plan their own broadcasts of same however just between leaders David Cameron and Ed Milliband… but which will make for more interesting viewing?

The soap opera is already starting with David Cameron’s refusal to take part, unless the Green Party are invited (they were excluded from the initial line-up).  SNP and Plaid Cymru were also added to the mix which would have originally included just the other four parties.  All parties except the Conservatives and the Lib Dems had agreed whole-heartedly to the original plan and all parties in Northern Ireland complained about being excluded… ummm, what a palaver.  Sort it out guys!  Things are getting interesting…

Let’s put this in the context of Promotional Handling - is it the case that involving too many parties leads to complete disarray?  Well, success depends on whether all parties have the same objectives.  Usually your Handling House will be at the end of the chain so their success depends on everyone else’s! 

If you’re the Promoter (or the Agency working for them), it’s imperative that you engage all parties involved at concept stage, whenever possible – a handling brief usually helps!  When you know exactly how your promotion is going to work, from experience (trust us, we know!) involving everybody working on it pays off, especially in the communication process.  It also brings more experience to the pot – always bear in mind that not all suggestions are destined to work first time and another party can put a different spin on your idea.

As long as teams have reasonable objectives to meet and are happy to discuss together, result!  Now learn something politicians!

Communicate with us on 0161 339 5132 to discuss your Fulfilment Services.

[selbyuk]

Love what you do

You shouldn’t really, but we couldn’t help but laugh when we heard the local news report of a guy in Wigan who took a bit of a fancy to a (ahem......) post box!  The intoxicated fella was reported to have made his advances on this iconic inanimate object following a row with a woman.  In the resulting scenario the star-shaped guy had thrust himself against the piece of iconic British metal shouting “wow”.  He was obviously quite pleased with the service provided by Royal Mail… wonder if he felt different in the morning, though?

Speaking of which, with the recent demise of City Link – at Christmas, the entire postal network was recently thrown into turmoil.  There is a huge window of opportunity for other carriers in the industry now and it’s certainly proved you should never lay all your eggs in one basket – glad to say that’s not the case for us!  We had a lasting relationship with City Link here and were sad to see the collapse of the business however we also have the same with other carriers, so weren’t too badly disrupted.

Keeping good relationships is crucial for success in the promotional fulfilment industry, not only with your suppliers and clients but within your organisation too.  We’ve a diverse array of personalities across Team Selby, an important factor we always consider for new recruits.  The world of Selby’s has its stresses therefore it’s equally important we all like our jobs here too, in order to succeed at what we do.  Life really is too short, if you don’t love what you do, you have a choice not to do it too!

The best way to describe the way things work here is that old cliché, “no two days are ever the same”.  When you work with the unexpected, you come to expect it too, which has served us well so many times!

Anything unexpected hit you yet?  Experts in the great unknown in the promotional fulfilment side of things, we’re sure you’ll be showing us something we’ve seen before.  Call us on 0161 339 5132, for a broad-minded outlook… and the promise that we’ll still love you in the morning.

[selbyuk]

Everybody loves a bargain, right? Hell, yeah!

… And there will be plenty of those on Friday this week.  Why?  It’s Black Friday, of course!  Black what??!!  We hear (some of) you cry.   Well, to be honest, for years in good old Blighty the Friday of the fourth week in November each year could have been like any other however all this changed in 2010 when online retail giants, Amazon launched their “Black Friday” sale in the UK.  To cut a long story short, Black Friday is the American version of Boxing Day (following on from the Thanksgiving celebrations on Thursday).

With the mild Autumn we’ve had so far, this year is expected to be the biggest yet.  We do things differently here though with Amazon sales starting on Monday this week.  Mustn’t complain.  WE LOVE GRABBING OURSELVES A BARGAIN!

Of course, Black Friday isn’t the only day of the year for sales!  Traditionally, or at least when most of us were little, the “sales” were usually on Boxing Day and in January.  Nowadays there’s always an excuse for a sale throughout most of the year.  Speaking of which, Team Selby can easily accommodate and arrange the pick, pack and despatch of all your POS requirements for when those sales are due.  With discounts available on packaging materials and despatch costs, we don’t need any excuse for a sale here – we offer it as standard!

We’ve seen it all over the years, handling items such as posters, flyers, shelf talkers, wobblers, POS units and dump bins.  With such an extensive back catalogue of fulfilment, we’re sure whatever you have lined up, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.  Give us a call on 0161 339 5132 to discuss your requirements.

As good as sales can be and as happy as we are to grab a bargain, sometimes they bring out the devil in us all, so if you’re venturing out this Friday, be careful out there…

[selbyuk]

Don’t lay all your eggs in one basket? Who says you shouldn’t?

That old saying, eh?  Take heed, don’t keep everything in one place, what if it all goes wrong?  Well, what if that’s not always the case?  Laying your eggs in one basket makes perfect sense to us.  Why?  Read on…

As a Promotional Handling House, we get to see, feel and experience a sizeable part of our client’s briefs (no, not in the proverbial sense) – well, the fulfilment aspects anyway.  Advice?  We’ve got it in abundance.  Being on the “front line” of the promotion, so to speak, we deal directly with the people who matter the most – YOUR consumer.

Playing host for many services on your consumer’s journey including Loyalty Schemes, Competitions and On-Pack Offers we see it all too often where pieces of the promotional jigsaw are scattered in different places… and it just doesn’t work!  We’re not being defeatist here, just truthful. 

It’s quite simple, really.  Going to one place for handling your promotion not only saves you time, there can be financial benefits too.  After all, how much money is wasted on resources when you’re desperately trying to gather all the pieces of information together to report to your client?  We’ve heard horror stories too, where clients have tried to save money by handling the fulfilment themselves and designating the phone line elsewhere – how does that work?  The answers simply aren’t there for the call handlers to start with!  Imagine how difficult this can be if your despatches are with one client and customer services with another – nightmare!  Bet you’d wish you hadn’t have bothered… 

In a nutshell, if your handling house provides all the fulfilment services required to handle your promotion, use them!  On occasion we too have missed out of some promotional handling aspects.  Why?  Because our client didn’t know we did that!

Now do you believe us?  Engaging with your preferred handling house from the offset and laying all your eggs in one basket prevents you from getting egg on your face – call us on 0161 339 5132 to avoid brain scramble (sorry!)

Of course there are some who don’t mind egg on their faces!